Thursday, November 15, 2012

You're Going to Piss People Off, by Kelly Jensen

Whether you’re just joining or have been part of this
profession for a while, we all have our goals. Ultimately, we want to provide
as much as we can in the best possible way in order to make people happy,
regardless of what our title or work place looks like.

Except no matter what you do and no matter how hard you work
on something, you're sometimes going to piss people off at the same time, be it
patrons or be it your colleagues. There is no way to be an effective change
maker or advocate for yourself and services without making someone unhappy.

I'm a people pleaser. I hate when anybody is unhappy with
me, and I go out of my way to ensure that what I do and what I think doesn't
impact other people negatively. But when you're working with people, you're
going to interact with people who are unhappy. Who will always be unhappy. And
you're going to work with colleagues and other professionals who don't see what
you're doing is as valuable as what they're doing. So when you step up and
suggest a change, you're going to cause a scene.

You have to grow a pair and realize that none of those angry
feelings relate to you personally at all. They are directed at something
bigger, be it the fear of change or the fear of not understanding the value of
what it is you're pursuing.

Ignorance is scary.

In my first position as a teen librarian, I had no shame in
adding any book that sounded good to my collection, which served those in
grades 6 – 12. Guess what? Six months into the job, I had an angry letter from
a parent, suggesting one of the books her daughter checked out was completely
inappropriate for a 12-year-old. How dare I purchase and promote such materials
in the library?

The letter rattled me, as I had only been a professional
librarian for, well, six months. Now I had an angry parent and if she had
written me a letter, surely there were other people angry about how I was
performing collection development.

I immediately assumed I was a terrible librarian. It had
to be my fault her daughter borrowed something she shouldn't have. It was
the collection I created, after all.

Wrong.

After reading and rereading the letter, I came to accept the
problem was not me in the least. It was the parent not doing her job. It was
the parent who allowed her daughter to check out material she wasn't
comfortable with. I wrote a letter back, stating clearly that the teen area
served all teens between 6th and 12th grade.

By relenting with one person who was pissed off at me, I'd
in turn be doing a disservice to the rest of my patrons. Those books needed to
be there to serve my entire diverse teen population.

Putting a firm foot down on your expertise and on your
ethics will not only piss off patrons though. Eventually, you're going to piss
off your own colleagues.

Enter ARCgate 2012.

I wrote a blog post
talking about a situation that left youth librarians at a disadvantage when it
came to picking up Advanced Reader Copies of forthcoming titles at the American
Library Association convention. That single post caused a surge in hate
comments, in angry Twitter rants, and at least two blog posts from well-known
library-world bloggers. I was called selfish, greedy, and a host of other
uncomplimentary things by people in my own field for standing up and speaking about
something I believed in. That many others believed in, too.

I spent two weeks seeing my reputation and my words being torn
apart and misconstrued. But through each new thing I read, I reminded myself
over and over that I had said what I said because I believed in it. I reached
out to those who could institute a change for the betterment of not just
myself, but other librarians who felt the same way I did.

Change is happening.

My voice was heard.

These are two personal examples. I could talk about other
times I pissed off parents with my collection development policy or about the
time I told the area homeschool groups about our library's teen programs (which
included a paranormal program that contradicted one group's very conservative
beliefs) or about the time I quit a library job without a backup plan because
the environment was not conducive to making me my best, personally or
professionally. The thing is, no matter what role you're in and no matter how
much or how little experience you have in the field, your beliefs and values
are going to piss someone off somewhere.

To be as good as you want to be and to further your
goals in providing the best service and experience as a librarian, you have to
suck it up and stick to your beliefs.

That's not to say don't follow the rules. Just push against
them as much as you need to. That's the only way change can happen. If it means
pissing off one or two or six people for the betterment of a community? It's
worth it.

Kelly Jensen is a
librarian for teen/adult services at a public library. She tweets at @catagator and blogs at Stacked Books.

Angry parent letters are the best, aren't they? But you gotta remember you're the professional and you serve an entire community, rather than just that one parent and child. Fortunately, your collection has more than just alien books (though if it was all alien books, then that's okay too since, well, the parent would know this, right?)